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Arizona Colt(1966)

I’m doing things a bit different this week. Two spaghetti westerns. ARIZONA COLT today and it’s sequel ARIZONA COLT RETURNS Saturday. Genre giant Giuliano Gemma was the first actor to play the rule. From Arizona, when asked about his last name touches his pistol and says “Colt.”

Another spaghetti vet Fernando Sancho plays outlaw leader Torrez Gordo Watch, mostly called Gordo. His band is known as the Sidewinders because he insists on branding them with a snake emblem on their forearms. Known and feared throughout the territoy, each member has a five hundred dollar reward on their head. Gordo’s reward is fifty thousand. A hard man, he carries a nusical pocket watch he said once belonged to his father. Father told him “Once I am dead, it is yours.” Gordo laughs, “Five seconds later he was dead!”

At the beginning of the film, the Sidewinders raid a Mexican prison, slaughtering all the guards, simply to replenish his gang. Gordo is not insistent anyone join his band. If you’re not interested, he simply kills you. Arizona is in the prison, but has a little more going. Get his hands on a gun and he’s practically unstoppable. He declines the invitation and escapes.

Gemma Arizona Colt with a harder edge than normal while still displaying that matinee idol smile. At times he seems a little ruthless with no regard for anyone else’s welfare. When he agres to go after the killer of one of the saloon owner’s daughters, he demands the hand of his remaining daughter, that engaging grin prominent even as he does.

The killer is Kay(Nello Pazzafini, billed as Giovanni Pazzafini), another spaghetti vet that usually plays a villain, though he gets a hero role in one film.

Arizona ends up defending the town in the end, even though he’d been tossed out after killing Kay for the murder of Dolores(Rosalba Neri), the saloon owner’s daughter and a bit of a sexy thing. Arizona was more interested in the other daughter, Jane(Corinne Marchand), a colder, more reserved woman. When warned about her, he says “the difficult ones are more interesting.”

The movie is stuffed with familiar actors, familiar that is if you love spaghetti westerns. Roberto Carmadiel plays Double Whiskey, a drunk and explosives expert. He’s a sidewinder, but finally breaks because of the bloodthirsty Gordo. He likes Arizona and saves him when Gordo shoots him up. Some of the other faces include Jose Terron, one of the ugliest men one can imagine, and Jose Manuel Martin, perrenial bad guys. They are always gang members and aside from maniacal laughter while shooting people never have a speaking role.

The finale between Arizona and Gordo happens, appropriately enough, in a coffin maker’s shop.